It was there!
Her name was there! 'Elizabeth Fairshall
of Sellymead! It was as plain as plain could
be. Her name was there and I thumped out the words to him with a fist upon the
table so hard his quill jumped from the ink well and splattered a line of blots
across the page.

It certainly
took him aback and he was suddenly fumbling for a cloth and grovelling with
apologies. And rightly so, they'd got it wrong and there were no two ways about
it. But as the snivelling idiot signed the pass that I needed to see the
pompous ass of a Provost he was still bleating on with excuses, and unable to
take any more of his drivel I snatched both pass and ink splattered list and
strode with them up the stairs.

I was boiling
with rage but at the same time I was overcome with relief that I was getting
somewhere at long last. It was just as the Prioress had said,
Elizabeth's name was on the list of those to be freed. The only trouble was
that after a three day ride with it from the priory it had taken me another two
days to get into the Provost's office. The myriad layers of protocol were
ridiculous.

It had been a
terrible few days altogether. When the news came it had been a terrible shock.
The girl's mother and I were soon to be married and I was at her house when the
news arrived. Her mother, as you can imagine, was distraught. Four months
earlier, on her seventeenth birthday, Elizabeth had told us that she wished to
spend a year studying at a priory and because I had a long standing connection
with the St.Vera's Priory up country at Cronville it was decided she should write to Mother Hazel
the Prioress. This she did and was soon accommodated there to study and assist
the sisters in their labours.

Even though we
were enduring the most catastrophic upheaval in our history her mother and I
had both thought Elizabeth would be perfectly safe in a priory. We were at
peace now. The war was over. We were a defeated nation, defeated by a godless
rabble of heathen slime that had threatened our border for generations, and
certainly since the disastrous alliances with Helderland
and Sjeelburg. We'd lost everything. We'd lost our
sovereignty, our pride and our dignity. Old officers like myself had been
stripped of rank, forcefully retired, and that was supposed to be the end of
it, andI say
again we were at peace. But we'd been wrong to let her go.

Although the
war was lost little bands of resistance still prevailed in the hills. Little
groups of gallant men and women were still attacking the Gorbian
troops whenever they saw a chance. It was madness, they had no hope of driving
them from our soil, but God bless them they were persisting still.

Their gallant
attacks almost certainly swelled the numbers of people running to join them.
They were beinghailed
as heroes but it was lunacy, and every one of their attacks carried a heavy
price. Tragically, every time they hit the Gorbians
so the Gorbians took revenge, seizing and putting to
death innocent civilians.

In one incident
when an attack on asmall camp resulted in
six Gorbian soldiers dying in a blaze they retaliated
by taking a dozen nuns from where they were working in the gardens alongside
their priory and condemned them to be burnt. The priory was St.Vera's
at Cronville. Four of the twelve however weren't nuns
at all. Working in the gardens all twelve were dressed in ordinary working
clothes but four were simply young helpers, and one of them was Elizabeth.

The Prioress
pleaded for days on end for the lives of all of them and eventually the Gorbian Military Department relented and agreed on a
compromise to execute the nuns and free the girls. This led to the Civil
Affairs Department in Sellymead getting involved, and
with the Prioress naming each of their prisoners two lists were drawn up, one
list naming the eight nuns who would be put to death, and the other naming the
four girls who would be spared.

However, when
the names were written out and copied someone got it wrong. When the prioress
saw the execution list nailed up in the Cronville
town square she found there were nine names on it, the ninth being Elizabeth's.
Whether it was an innocent mistake by one of the clerks or a sadistic act by
someone we will never know, but it was a nightmare. A nightmare that compelled
me to go all the way to Cronville to collect the
original list from the Prioress and on my return to Sellymead
endeavour to show our so called public servants their stupid mistake.

Once inside the
Provost's office I dumped the list onto his desk and spread it before him with
both hands. “There you are,” I said. “It's exactly as I've been telling your
imbecilic clerk downstairs. Elizabeth Fairshall's
name is on the wrong list! For god's sake man its
obvious. You know well enough the order was amended to execute the nuns, not
their helpers!”

It was like
talking to a child. “She's not a nun!” I kept saying. “And if she was a nun her
name would be down as Sister Elizabeth Fairshall, not
just Elizabeth Fairshall, and her address would be
St. Vera's up at Cronville, not a private address
just two miles down the road from here!”

It was
inconceivable but this mindless servant of all this endless red tape our new
masters so glorified in was still struggling to read alist of names that a twelve year old would
have read in one minute flat. As for the difference in addresses I really don't
know why it wasn't immediately obvious, but after what seemed to be an eternity
he eventually drew a long and laboured breath. “Well Sir James,” he wheezed,
“It does look as if there has been a mistake.”

“At last!” I said, with no effort to disguise my disdain,
and now it was my turn to heave a sigh when he assured me that any further
copies would now be amended to match this one and instructions for Elizabeth's
release would be sent to the prison without delay.

I can assure
you it was with enormous relief that I was was able
to turn my back at last on that accursed Town Hall. It was a veritable quagmire
of bureaucrats, a legion of pen pushers and stuffed shirts, and now I was free
to go back to the girl's mother with the good news. However, before collecting
my horse I sat for a while to rest outside the tavern next door with a tankard
of ale and a bowl of beef stew.

I was certainly
ready for it, and as I sat there with my first proper meal for two days I thought
how it would have been for the poor girl if her name had remained on that list,
and in my mind's eye I could see her. Just seventeen with soft brown hair, and
those gorgeous green eyes, standing helplessly lashed to the stake with the
fire raging around her. And what if I'd been a commoner? The girl wouldn't have
stood a chance. There was no way those town hall vermin would have seen me. She
would have been justone more defenceless wretch for them to burn.

I'd seen it
often enough. The first was when I was very young. The girl had been accused by
her mistress of witchcraft and she lived in that fire for nigh on twenty
minutes, and there had been another over in Lillington too. And then there had
been the heresy purges. They weren't sights you'd want to see that's for sure,
and mercifully my apparitions were ended suddenly by the clattering sound of a Gorbian platoon of lancers approaching. I sat and watched
them pass, twenty jet black horses with riders smart
and erect in their gleaming silver breast plates and their scarlet plumed
helmets; and I spat on the cobbles. Only minutes before I'd been starving but
now I couldn't eat another morsel.

On my way out
of town I was stopped at the river gate. It was something that happened all the
time. Some-one with nothing better to do would authorise a spot check somewhere
anda bunch of Gorbian morons would demand your papers and then spend ages
trying to read them. This, I will tell you, is the price you pay when your
government is too weak to stand up to an aggressor. This is the price of
surrender.

As I rode, my
thoughts turned again to Elizabeth, soon to be my daughter, and then to hermother. It was
late in life for me to marry, but after so many years as a soldier I was ready
to live out the rest of my life in comfort with a woman I'd come to love
dearly. I'd come a long way in life and there had been too many battles for a
wife, but now it was all going to be so very different.

Nevertheless,
even then as I rode, I cast my gaze across to the distant hills to my left, and
along to the Sellidan ridge and up to the Brafton Forest, thinking I might just see something. On
another day, or at another time, perhaps there might just have been a thin
spiral of smoke all those miles away. But there was nothing.

And the reason
I was looking? Some of my men were up there.They were holding their ground up beyond the Bellmoorriver. In that great forest there were men who still
walked with honour, men who hadn't wilted like the rest of us, brave men who I knew would never surrender. Heroes every one
of them, heroes with the hearts of gods and all of them doomed. Every one of
them would die. There was no tomorrow for warriors.

With a surge of
despair I dug my spurs hard into the flanks of my horse and we were on our way.
On our way to a new life. No longer was I a warrior.

When I reached
the house old Agnes came to the door and went immediately to tell her mistress
the news and Elinor came to me in a joyful flood of
tears. At last that fearful burden this poor woman had been enduring had been
lifted. At long last she knew her daughter was safe, and straight away we knelt
and duly gave our thanks to the Lord.

The wheels of
bureaucracy were always going toturn slowly, I knew that, but after a
week I grew impatient. Her mother was worried and so was I. In the end I sent
word to the Prioress care of a Constable's Courier that I would come if I heard
no news by the following week. That week came and still there was no news. And
so I rode the long journey north again, back to the miserable little town of Cronville and its grim prison.

Again it was a
long and tedious journey of three days. There are no inns along the way. In
that part of the country you eat only from what you carry in your saddle bags
or gather from the green and greythorn bushes, and
each night I slept at the side of the track, my sword handy at all times.

Wearily I
eventually arrived at the town ditch, and found the town strangely quiet. Soon
I was to discover why. As I came round the hill where the Priory can be seen up
among the Layla trees I looked across the town to
another hill, Oldgate hill, a baron rocky perch upon
which the prison stands like an old ancient castle.

For most of the
journey I'd been followed by a dismal grey cloud, and now there was another
awaiting me. It hung motionless over the prison like a shroud and I guessed
what it was and why the streets were so deserted. The people of Cronville were in morning, most of them hidden away behind
locked doors.

I checked my
horse to a slow walk. I was in no hurry, and it wasn't until I came into full
view of the prison that I saw the fires. Up along the stony terrace that runs
along the foot of the wall there was a line of eight pyres blazing away for all
to see, and even at that distance you could see that in the flames of each
there stood a figure, black and motionless.

As I got closer
a few people were shuffling towards me. Brave andragged figures drifting back to their
homes who spoke not a word as they past. Neither did they look upon me, but by
the tears of the women I knew they had come to pay their last respects, for
clearly those bodies were the eight nuns.

I waited for
the flames to die down a little before I ventured up the hill. Nevertheless
when I got up there the smell of burnt flesh was still lingering in the air,
and one look along that line of pitiful remains was enough. All that was left
of them was a row of indistinguishable shapes chained upright to their stakes.
Each a smouldering black and lifeless form of charred
flesh and bone.

With very
little patience I hammered on the gates, and once my demand for entry had been
answered by some minion speaking through a small iron grill I hastily rode in.
A serf then took my horse and Ipresented my credentials to the guards
who of course checked and double checked them. Then at last I was shown to an
anti room and told the Prioress was also there at the prison. I had wanted a
bath before anything else, even before a meal, but I couldn't keep her waiting
and before long I heard the guards unlocking a door somewhere and moments later
she burst into the room.

She came almost
running to me and sounding very anxious. “Sir James,”she said, “Please tell me you have her
papers.”

I looked at her
in bewilderment, and she clasped her hands in anguish.

“Her release
papers, they haven't arrived!” she cried, “When they didn't arrive yesterday I
told them you would have them. Please Sir James tell me you have them.”

I shook my head
in dismay. “No,” I said, “I don't. Where are they?”

“I don't know!”
she cried, “They should have been here days ago.”

I was seething.
I couldn't believe it. “They'll still be back at Sellymead!”
I was saying, and I was telling her the blasted fools at the town hall would
just have to bring them as a special delivery, but she wasn't listening,
instead she was almost shouting at me.

“Sir James!”
she was saying, “There's no time, if you don't have
her documents for release they're not waiting any longer! They want to burn her
today!”

I stood and stared
at her in horror. “But they can't! They can't, her name's
on the right list now. They put it right! They changed it!”

“But they
haven't sent it!” she insisted, “And they're not waiting any longer. When it
didn't arrive with the Constable's Courier I had to plead with them to wait for
you to come, I was sure it would be with you and you were our last hope!”

I was stunned,
but not for long, I stormed out of the room and bellowing like a lunatic I was
demanding to see the governor. I ranted and raged, and when the gate keeper
said he couldn't be summoned I kicked over his table and grabbed him by the
neck. I told him I was going to break it and his miserable little colleague ran
off in terror.

Fortunately for
the wretch in my grasp several guards arrived with swords drawn and beseeched
me to let go of him. This I did but refused their request to unbuckle and drop
my sword. And so, with an uneasy truce, I was taken to the governor who
received me in an almost palatial apartment. Even for a Gorbian
he was repulsively smarmy, and so too was his lady friend who fixed me with a
sickly smile the whole time I was with them.

I told them
everything, everything that I had done to secure Elizabeth's release, and he
was quite willing to listen, even sympathise, but it was all deceit. I was told
that a rider would be sent immediately to the area commander in the town with
my plea for a stay of execution.

“He's a
reasonable man,” I was told, “Rest assuredhe will surely see that there has been
a simple mistake.”

In the end
there was nothing more that I could do but accept his word. And so, uneasily I
put my trust in him. Yes, I put my trust in a Gorbian,
and for that I will rot in hell.

The Prioress
was able then to take me to see Elizabeth. She was in a terrible state. As we
entered her darkened cell she was kneeling in a corner and shrank away in
absolute terror. Her grace told her hurriedly that it was us and that I had
come to secure her release, and when she saw me she burst into tears. We helped
her up as best we could because she was chained by one of her ankles and we sat
her on a stool. It was terrible seeing her like that, and we knelt the whole
time with her, trying our best to comfort and re-assure her. As the Prioress
cuddled her I was telling her that the mix up with her name being on the wrong
list had been dealt with by the mayor back home, acting on behalf of the Civil
Affairs Department, and here the area commander had been told, and so on and so
on, and that everything was going to be all right. And of course I told her how
much her mother was longing for her to come home.

It was a long
wait but we filled our time with prayer, and as well as we could we concentrated on plans for the future, and on the wedding we
were soon to have between her mother and me. Eventually though I was called
away to meet the area governor. I was told that he had come personally to meet
me, and I can tell you I felt very anxious as I rose to go.

I was ready for
anything and it was a comfort to feel the weight of my sword at my side. I was
taken in silence from the cells and through a door that led to a murky
corridor. The only light came through a barred window that overlooked an inner
courtyard and soon after we came to a flight of stone steps. These led down to
the rear of the prison. My guide very politely allowed me to go first and at
the bottom I turned a corner and was confronted by my horse!

There was
no-one around, there was just my horse, saddled and tethered to a rail
alongside a big gate which, strangely, was wide open.

Suddenly I
heard a noise behind me. I spun round just in time to see my guide disappearing
through a door and I realised I'd been tricked! I sprinted to the door but
before I could get there he'd closed and bolted it. I tried to barge it open
but it was hopeless and I stopped to gather my wits and curse myself in an
unholy rage for being such a fool!

It was then
that I heard the sound of another door, somewhere above me, but this one was
opening. I looked up to see the governor and his grinning lady friend leaning
over a balcony. He started to apologise for the fact that I'd been abandoned
and impatiently I shouted up to him to come to the point. He duly obliged and I
was told that regrettably the area commander had refused my request, describing
my claim as a falsehood and Elizabeth's execution could be delayed no further.

Furiously I was
shouting up to them every obscenity that raced into my mind, but they just
withdrew from sight, and instinctively I tore back up the steps, along the corridor
and back to the door I'd been brought through, but that was bolted now and no
matter how much I barged and kicked it I couldn't budge it.

God knows how
long I ranted and raved. I kicked at the door, time and time again, then turning back to the window in the corridor I smashed
the glass with my bare fists and heaved at the bars. I was hoping to drop into
the yard below, but for all my strength and desperation I couldn't even bend
them. Realising I was getting no-where I ran down the steps again, mounted and
galloped out through the open gate, hoping and praying to find some other way
of getting back into the accursed place.

It was useless
though. There was no way back in. There was no way even of climbing over the
walls, and of course when I circled the terrace I found the main gates were
closed and no-one even answered my curses or the beating I rained upon the
gates with my fists and the butt of my sword.. Nor did
a solitary soul peer at me from the wall above. It was quite clear those slimy
bastards were just waiting for me to go, but I had no intention of going. I was
staying. And I knew full well as God is my witness they were not building a
pyre for Elizabeth while I still had blood in veins! No bastard was going to
burn my Elizabeth, not while I had a sword in my hand. They wouldn't even lay
the first faggot, or if they did I'd be lying dead across it.

Constantly I
patrolled all round the walls, watching both gates, but they didn't venture
forth one solitary step. Those heathen cowards couldn't even find the courage
to face a single real soldier,

and in the end I got off my horse and sat on the ground.

I was ready for
a long wait, and as it got dark I looked again along the wall at what was now a
row of smouldering embers. No posts supporting ghastly black shapes stood there
now. Now there was nothing but ashes, but as the darkness grew those ashes
started to glow and my resolve was fortified a thousand times over. Those brave
nuns were with me! Their spirits still glowed, I was no longer alone!

As it turned
out though it wasn't long into the evening before I heard a cry. I listened
again, hard, but at first I heard nothing, then suddenly I heard it again and
it was coming from inside the prison, and when I heard it again I was sureit was
Elizabeth!

Jumping to my
feet I furiously beat again upon the gates but stillno-one came and still no-one answered
my shouts, but each time I stopped hammering I could hear cries. And then I
stepped back some distance to look up to the wall. I don't know why, but as I
did I saw something that turned my blood cold. It was smoke, its underside lit
by an orange glow!

In panic I rode
furiously back to the rear gate and here her cries were louder. In a mindless
fury I dismounted and flew up the steps that led to the corridor and saw
immediately the glow of a fire coming through the barred window. I ran to it
and looking down into the yard I saw her. They were burning her! The bastards
had stripped her naked and she was standing in a haze of smoke and flames with
her wrists chained up above her head to a post. Her ankles were chained to it
too and she stood on bundles of brushwood and branches which, all ready, were
well ablaze!

The sight of
her went through me like a knife and I yelled down to her. The Prioress,
striving to be as close to her as she could, was begging her to pray, but when
Elizabeth saw me she started crying out to me, frantically pleading with me to
save her, and as I strove with all my strength to rip apart those bars several
below were turning and looking up at me, laughing of course and callously
deriding my efforts.

I was pulling
at those bars so frantically I was going mad, but I couldn't move them! I just
wasn't strong enough. I'd grown old and useless! And by now the fire was raging,
already it was becoming an inferno and two men were dragging the Prioress away
from her, and as they did Elizabeth started to scream. She was burning now. She
was screaming and writhing in absolute torment. She was going berserk!Oh God it was ghastly!

I could do
nothing, nothing but tug and tug at those bars, until eventually I was
desperately pleading with the Lord to take her quickly, but her torture went on
and on and I couldn't face it any longer, she was suffering so terribly,
twisting and screaming until I had to turn away. I couldn't watch her poor body
turning red raw like a pig on a spit, I just couldn't. I turned away and I
slumped to the floor with my hands over my ears, but I couldn't block out her
screams, and then suddenly I found I was running.

I ran to the
steps and leapt down them two and three at a time, but she was still in my
ears. That hysterical screeching was driving me mad. I jumped onto my horse and
fled through those gates and down the hill and through the town, flogging him
until he must have bled. But although we galloped like the wind across those
moors her screams stayed with me for mile, after mile, after mile!

In truth, I
hear her every day. Sometimes she's screaming, and sometimes she's calling out
to me, pleading with me, begging me to save her. And in my nightmares she's
asking me why I failed her.

It was a long
journey back. It seemed to take for ever. But gradually the end came into
sight. As that roaddescends at last from the moors you come to afork in the road. You might know it. To the
left is the Bellmoor river and the high ridge that
leads to the forest ofBrafton. To the right the road leads
down to the meadows of Sellymead. There I stopped
with no-one for company but my poor old horse, and slouching in the saddle I
thought again for the millionth time of Elizabeth's mother, at home just five
leagues away.

It was late
afternoon. She would be with her old servants, busy with flowers and
vegetables, clean bed linen, bread, milk and butter, and fruit from the garden.
Dinner would be cooking, and they'd be gossiping, making plans for our wedding,
and yes plans for a party. A special day soon when at last
her daughter would come running through the door.

I sat for a
long time looking down that road. Long enough for the tears to roll down my
grimy face and soak into my stubble, for I longed to be there. I so longed to
live the dream, a dream I'd cherished for so many years. A
home.A wife.And peace.

I looked then
to my left, and again I looked for signs on the horizon, perhaps a wisp of smokerising from the
forest, but again there was nothing. Yet they were there. There were men of
honour in that vast forest and I knew I could find them. I looked once more to
my right, down the road to Sellymead, and then quickly
before my tears could drown me I pulled my horse round to the left and kicked
my spurs into him hard!

With a startled
snort he leapt forward and we galloped off towards that distant forest, and for
the first time since that God forsaken day of our surrender I suddenly felt
free! Free again, free to fight, and yes die too, but once again dear Lord,
there would be Gorbian blood on my sword!!